An Undertaking of Moribund Fellowship

Buy a hearse, join a club, see the world's largest banjo. Plus other insights into the dead obvious.

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Today is our big show. We park all the cars inside Lebanon's blessedly cool civic center, on old Route 66, mere blocks from the internationally renowned Munger Moss Motel. I'm parked beside a 1966 Miller-Meteor Cadillac with twin suicide doors and a motorized casket tray that slides out either side at the touch of a button, which it's doing quite often.

Standing nearby is a hearse owner wearing a T-shirt adorned with skeletons in a variety of difficult sexual positions.

Ken Howe shows me one of three Cadillacs he's entered. It's a gorgeous 1955 Miller flower car, resembling an El Camino, into whose bed lavish floral sprays would have been deposited to demonstrate the deceased's high station.

"I've got customers who just beg a final ride in this thing," asserts Ken, shaking his head. "But I'm a car guy. I tell 'em, 'Hey, this is actually a second-rate ride, you know, 'cause it was sort of a service vehicle.' But they want it anyway."

So do a lot of PCS members. Restored flower cars are hot right now. The only cars hotter are carved-panel hearses. One of the best belongs to Jerry and Ronda Kayser, whose 1939 Cadillac took 2.5 years to restore. Of the 237 Series 61 commercial chassis supplied to hearse builders in '39, theirs is the only known survivor. With elaborate gothic-style draperies carved into both flanks, it cost $3745 new. Now it's worth an extra $80,000 or so.

Jerry says that restoring the car preserved his sanity, which was under attack by the funeral home he oversees back in Washington. "People treat funeral directors like used-car salesmen," he complains. "It's not a profession anymore. Just an occupation." At home, Jerry maintains a '39 Henney Nu-3-Way Packard hearse, with 36,000 original miles and a three-way casket table. He still deploys it for three-dozen services annually. But he's so fearful of damaging his carved-panel Caddy that he won't drive it, won't even put it on display in his funeral home, "because I can't control who touches it," he says. Jerry shows the Cadillac country-wide, hauling it in a color-coordinated trailer. He doesn't know how many trophies he's won. During the car's restoration, he fashioned its carriage lamps by hand, spending $2000 on each. "Then I found some originals on eBay for $150. I told the lady, 'I'll take six.'"

At the formal PCS banquet-our gala night out, requiring suits, ties, polished wingtips-the Kaysers' hearse is voted best in show, neither a surprise nor a disappointment to any PCS member.

Just before dinner, a local reverend delivered a blessing that was on the cusp of longish, then a Cadillac salesman from Springfield delivered a "motivational speech" surpassing longish. This tedious oratory had the effect of sedating the kind-faced reverend, who fell asleep, then tumbled explosively out of his chair, skittering across the polished civic-center floor at a velocity usually reserved for Balkan gymnasts. The reverend traveled perhaps five feet on his back-resembling a break dancer, actually-until further progress was thwarted by an iron railing. This whole piece of unintended acceleration took only two seconds to unfold, but the metal chair shot out sideways and produced as much noise as you'd expect at Stardust Lanes on free-beer night. The racket halted the salesman's speech as effectively as an earthquake. A woman seated next to the sprawled and dazed reverend looked on impassively, as if finding a man of the cloth inexplicably supine was an experience not new to her.

Only persons who are intellectually stunted and possess the worldview, self-absorption, and general attention span of a Girl Scout would find so common a pratfall amusing. This is why I excused myself for 15 minutes.

When I returned, one of the Goths seated opposite me-his multicolored hair teased into an erect fantail closely approximating a giant anteater's mane-withdrew an authentic Army ammunition case from which he produced a black eyebrow pencil and a tube of black lipstick, which he applied in vast but conscientious quantity as his girlfriend whispered vital cosmetology hints.

At 8 p.m., we concluded the car show by taking two slow-motion laps of the parking lot, with all the hearses' and ambulances' overhead beacons, gumballs, sirens, strobes, and pulsing "wigwags" at full tilt. This alarmed nearby residents but not the police, who had already been alerted by Lebanon's mayor, who had eaten dinner beside the bruised reverend.

And so, for these reasons and perhaps eighteen others, it is manifestly apparent that the Professional Car Society is the best car club in America, and I am pursuing a lifetime membership.